Karl Marx has, paradoxically, a bad name amongst the political mainstream and yet an abiding influence amongst scholars and political activists.
Yet, while mainstream Democrats may seek to abstain from ever mentioning the name of Marx, out of fear of appearing "too far to the left", Marx's thinking remains very useful for all those dedicated to progressive causes, whatever party label they may happen to embrace.
In my discipline, sociology, Marx is so influentiual that the main American sociological organization, the American Sociological Association has an entire section dedicated to Marxist sociology; I was briefly a member, but since my resources are limited and my scholarly interests lie slightly elsewhere, I am not at the moment; I still respect careful Marxian analysis, though.
This diary is really a short outline, but hopefully some here will find it of interest.
Marx's thinking is insightful and useful in several areas.
- Class is a reality, and Marxism underscores this fact.
- Class structure is based on the ownership of capital, that is, wealth in the form of investment capital; the vast majority of this is owned by the wealthiest 5-10 percent of our society. Those individuals and organizations who control capital have a great deal of power over those who do not control capital, as is shown in the power of corporations to break unions and to induce mass layoffs so as to maintain profit.
- Marx was more or less an economic determinist, but if you read him carefully, you come to appreciate that his thinking was a bit more complex. In fact, he recognized that there were a variety of forces in society - law, politics, culture, etc., which were also, in their own way, deterministic (a theory fleshed out considerably by later Marxist theorists, such as Jürgen Habermas). But having a deterministic theory which emphasizes the economic system (Marx's "infrastructure") allows one to make various predictions about events, and thus to develop one's thinking about social and political life in relatively scientific terms.
- Marx repeatedly critiques ideology and false consciousness, and helps to underscore the role that these play in politics; he would have a field day with the "faith based" politics of the Bush administration. Clearly those heavily shaped by ideological thinking have a hard time seeing beyond ideology's confines.
- Marx undercores the revolutionary nature of capitalism for social and cultural transformation; surely this is the case, as we see the rapid modernization and globalization, and all of the problems this entails, produced by capital's spread.
- Marx shows an application of an abstract analytic principle, Hegel's dialectic, for underscoring how social life is transformed by the "clash of opposites" (the dialectical thesis) and results in a synthesis of these opposites.
- Marxist theorizing reminds us that for much of human history, people lived in purely communal and propertyless/resource sharing arrangements; what we call "property" is a mere social construct.
- Marx was dedicated to true human emancipation and his thinking has had a wide range of applications, including to such areas as race, sexuality, and gender, where it has informed, deeply, radical thinking about these categories.
So what then might Marxist thinking offer progressives committed to the two party system and to a more progressive Democratic party?
My thinking is that it offers a realization about the contradictory nature of a system that is both democratic and capitalist - with the Democrats a more "democratic" party than the Republicans but still a pro-capitalist party. It offers a view of the inherent fragility, or crisis tendencies, of systems that grapple with contrsdictions. Since the Democrats and Marxism are, ostensibly, dedicated to progressive change and to reducing inequalities, they have, in spite of some real differences, at least a few major areas of overlap.
I hope others might add a bit to this analysis.